]]>http://www.earskills.net/mixes/d-fonk-live-on-grrif-radio-10-01-2013-19h-20h-in-dj-set/feed0851Cassetteboyhttp://www.earskills.net/review/cassetteboy
http://www.earskills.net/review/cassetteboy#commentsMon, 27 Sep 2010 08:06:34 +0000http://www.earskills.ch/?p=475Cassetteboy?! Cassette what?! Yeah what a funny name ! who the hell is Cassetteboy…that’s a good question

Cassetteboy are a UK based band composed by Mark Bolton & Steve Warlin and they like doing remixes & bootlegs of everything they find. Originally the name came from the intensive usage of old tape players/recorders used to create their first experiments.

Cassetteboy

The idea behind the concept was basically to retrieve famous peoples and celebrities voices and use it to change the original meaning. I quoting themselves “Cassetteboy are a double act who edit footage they’ve nicked off the telly to make celebrities swear”

A president talking about sex or drugs is always funny. A Pop star saying stupidity can appears even stupid as she’s already.

As some artists like Daft Punk or Bloody Beetroots, they don’t like to do public appearance with their real faces (so this should explain this first embedded picture, yes indeed)…

The first album, more a concept EP was released in 2000 under the name “Di + Dodi Do Die” on 7″ vinyl support it was already a political satire, mixing Lady Diana.

Cassetteboy - Di + Dodi Do Die

This wasn’t this EP that made the group famous, but it was acclaimed. Two years later they released another album still on the Barry’s Bootlegs label, known under the name of Festive Christmas. The album was full of derivative X-Mas products, Santa’s Claus as a Junkie, Alcoholic, or even worse…

Quietly the Cassetteboy genre grew up, to become something new and typical…The Group gained in notoriety. But this is a bit later on this year that the album “The Parker Tapes” made a huge impact… Still using the same successful recipe. We can also notice that the tracklist was having 98 tracks !!! All full of Jokes, interludes, parodies, gimmicks, etc….

Cassetteboy - The Parker Tapes

Some guests were invited as DJ Rubbish, who will be also involved later on several other projects…

They continued to produce albums over the year 2003, the excellent Cassetteboy and DJ Rubbish “Inside a whale’s cock Vol.1” was a true quality package. This excellent mix-album was full of quality tracks from Hip-Hop, to 80’s Pop, down-tempo and some excellent bootlegs made for the occasion.

Cassetteboy & DJ Rubbish - Inside a whale's cock vol.1

The humor, non-sense, vulgarities in all genre are still included in the program, and hopefully

You should by the way, definitely check this one (it is my personal pick).

But they didn’t stopped in a so good way, and strike again in 2005 with Dead Horse, another fine production from this duo, often compared to a best of. Followed the same year by Mick’s tape and his excellent artwork.

Cassetteboy - Mick's tape

As all good projects, they tends to be famous, that’s explain why this release was published on the great label Antidote. Yeah Steve & Mark made a long way to the success…and they deserved it.

This is finally in 2008 that the duo published on their good old label Barry’s Bootlegs “Carry on Breathing” totalizing once again an impressive tracklist of 87 tracks !

Cassetteboy is incredibly talented to search over loads of common dialogs, interviews, TV Shows, cartoons,… extract the main substance of it, and use it to create something dope, something different, something that sounds new, funny, surprising… The raw remixes and copy / paste of voices, noises and effects, could be brutal at the first listen, but finally this is also the signature of the group, they don’t wanted to create something smooth, they would like to show you that you can use existing words and sentences and change completely the meaning… Therefore some albums like “The Parker Tapes” were completely created using samples and snippets, and not all sounds raw and dirty, the sampling creation become a smooth soundtrack guiding the listeners over a considerable amount of everything…

In the Samples era, where each fragments can create a different sound-scape and tracks (funk, soul, rock, jazz), where the patchworks of sounds made the best Hip-Hop beats over the last 2 decades, Cassetteboy is king (using the same method but with voices…). We can also do a comparison with Musique Concrete. The new genre, attached to John Oswald is also often called plunderphonics.

Cassetteboy always interested by using media documents, is using images and videos to make derived products, speaking of which, check their excellent you tube channel by tuning on !

Cassetteboy logo

This reminds me also two excellent french products in the same way, Mozinor, who’s doing also excellent work and of course the fanstatic movie “La classe americaine – Le grand détournement” by Michel Hazanavicius & Dominique Mézerette made exclusively using old films from Warner (Himself inspirited by the movie “Lily la tigresse” (1966) from Woody Allen mad exclusively by old Japaneses series).

There’s not a lot of albums in Hip-Hop that can be called “Masterpiece”, but well considered this album is definitely one…

But before throwing this affirmation straight in your face, let me introduce to you Deltron 3030 !

This is how the story begins…

Back in the years 2000 Dan The Automator aka Daniel Nakamura (Gorillaz, Dr. Octagon, etc..) was thinking about a new project, great genius of his time, he decided to contact a rapper (Del tha Funkee Homosapien) and a DJ (Kid Koala) what such a great idea…he wanted to create a project album of futuristic hip-hop based in the year 3030.

Del tha Funkee Homosapien on the mic as the “Black Elvis”, Kid Koala (Skiznoid) on the cuts, and Dan for the production…and maybe some valuable guests…

The idea coming from his mind was to write a post-apocalyptic atmosphere, a planet where massive corporations rules the world, a vision of a dark future :

Dan the Automator

Some refugees, still free, decided to fight for their rights, in a world surrounded by fascism and dictatorship (The Corporate Bank) and extra-terrestrial invasions, here we are for the background.

Armed with his ideas and his mic Del (aka Deltron Zero on this album) took his pen and wrote the lyrics over two weeks (when we take a closer look, we can only salute the performance). His maturity on his album; perfectly blended with the dark ambiances cooked by Dan (aka Captain Aptos on this prod), crossing with razor-sharps cuts from Kid Koala (aka Skiznoid the Boy Wonder on this album) or humorous interludes…everything sound nice and well-thinked.

It is of course during these 21 tracks (yes 21 !!!) difficult to not make a parallel with some existing political systems (Some lyrics tend even to be visionaries ). This album takes the auditor into a world where viruses, robots, extra-terrestrials, are common. A massive corporation called the Corporate Bank rule the universe, terrorists tries to fight them by introducing humorous viruses (to awake the citizen on his monotony), a Mad Scientist implants cells to citizen to eradicate Dire Straits Fan, etc…

Each track is very well constructed, reflecting perfectly the speech of the MC’s, accompanying them from the beginning till the end as a non-dissociative part, combining heavy samples and dark patterns, all followed by a incisive rhythm. Sometimes smooth and funky, sometimes heavy, punching hard the listener. The choice of the samples, the beat construction with them, it is simply magnificent !

Del tha Funky Homosapien

This album is also a place where guests are welcomed, where guests makes the differences, add a true value to the soundtrack, to name a few :

Prince Paul (close friend of Dan, also a wonderful producer), DJ Peanut Butter Wolf (famous DJ, also one of the founder of the Label Stones Throw), Money Mark, Paul Barman, Damon Albarn, Mark Bell (LFO member, Björk producer) who produced some of the tracks …

It is difficult to choose a particular track such this album is perfect from end to end, my favorites goes into the names of Mastermind, Memory Loss, Madness and 3030 (and this infamous Hawaiian Guitar).

Where today the mainstream infect us with bullshit and sweetened “diet-Hip-Hop” it is always good to return to the classics, classics that respect the genre, and maybe include something new into the formula, something that you would keep in mind, something that make you have a second listen…

This album touch the perfection, if I can only provide you a good tip, go directly grab your copy, you won’t be disappointed, this album worth definitely each penny you spend on it